Where Does Profit Come from in the Payments Industry?
The recent development in the payments industry, namely the rise of Fintech companies, has created an opportunity to revisit the economics of the payment system and the puzzling nature of…
Is Labor Market Signaling the Weakening of Macroeconomic Models?
U.S. labor department's latest statistics, published on January 10th, suggested that the unemployment rate remained at a 50-year low of 3.5 percent. However, the same report indicates thatU.S. wage growth dropped below…
Is the Recent Buyback Spree Creating Liquidity Problems for the Dealers?
The anxiaties about large financial corporations' debt-funded payouts—aka "stock buybacks"—is reemerging a decade after the financial crisis. Companies on the S&P 500 have poured more than $5.3 trillion into repurchasing…
Is Debt a Sin?
In the recent world bank report published in the first week of January, the Washington D.C.-based group said there had been four waves of government debt accumulation over the last…
Is the Fed Losing Steam in Controlling Interest Rate?
As the final countdown to bring in 2020 begins, new concerns have emerged regarding the Fed's continuous ability to control the interest rate. Developments in the financial market such as…
What Exactly is the Function of the FX Market? A $6 Trillion Per Day Questions
“I am a hybrid. I do independent films and also do Hollywood films - I love them both.” Spike Lee According to the recent series of reports published by the…
Can Shadow Banking Replace Traditional Banking? We Will See Soon Enough
"A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it." Jean De La Fontaine The shift in the provision of financial intermediation away from traditional banks…
Should the Fed Open its Balance Sheet to the Securities Dealers? A Lesson from the Recent Wild Swings in the Repo Rate
“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new” -Socrates If the Fed's understanding of the existing problems in…
What Rules Inflation Targeting? A Time for Abandoning Taylor Rule
“No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.” ? Haruki Murakami Following the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), most central banks around…
Central Counterparties: When Monetary Policy is Not Enough
The overall picture of the U.S. economy, though far from stable, is hardly threatening. For instance, U.S. payrolls grew by 128,000 in October. Nevertheless, the Fed cut the interest rate…